


Five-Colored Clouds

by rubyrummy



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-18
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-20 17:11:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13722273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubyrummy/pseuds/rubyrummy
Summary: Howard was seeking salvation in work, searching, cocktails, even girls. He couldn’t even look at men after Steve—they all were wrong.





	Five-Colored Clouds

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Пятицветные облака](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2513156) by [rubyrummy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubyrummy/pseuds/rubyrummy). 



> English is not my native language so feel free to point out any mistakes.

Peggy grieved openly. Howard was truly jealous of it—he couldn’t do it.

He was seeking salvation in work, searching, cocktails, even girls. He couldn’t even look at men after Steve—they all were wrong.

Howard was seeking, but couldn’t find.

~*~

Maria had come out of the blue. One night he looked up from a prototype of a portable computer and saw a young woman of medium height and short dark hair.

“I’m your secretary,” she said.

“I don’t need a secretary,” he answered rudely, and she, she—smiled ironically.

“Sure.”

 

Maria was an excellent secretary. She didn’t seem interested in anything except work. It won him over—he was also a work addict.

“How old are you?” Howard asked once, abstracting himself from a chip for a minute. 

“I do not answer such questions,” she gave a steady reply. She didn’t even lift her head up.

“I’m your boss.”

“Convince me you as a boss need to know my age.”

He was at a loss how to answer.

“Watch out for the soldering iron,” she warned, kept looking at her paper. 

He spat an oath: a melted solder was flowing from the tip to a desk. The new desk, by the way.

~*~

In the sea, he caught her with a cigarette. She was sitting cross-legged on an upside down lifeboat and smoking. She was wearing a pea jacket and fur hat.

“Smoking?”.

“Smoking,” she admitted and blew a smoke ring.

He sat next to her, removed his pipe from his pocket, refilled it and lighted it, covering the glow of a fire in his pipe bowl with the palm of his hand. Putting out her cigarette on the bottom of her boot, she buried her hands in opposite sleeves.

“Teach me,” he asked.

Her eyes were light gray—as gray as the sky above the head—and her pupils were thin-needle.

“Shape your mouth into an ‘O’ shape”.

~*~

He had got hammered to lunchtime at anniversary of Steve’s disappearance. When Maria came into the library, Howard was sitting on the desk and looking into toe-caps.

“I drink alone,” he said, saluting her by raising a half-empty bottle of cognac. “For no friend is near”.

“Raising my cup,” she continued and took away the bottle. “I beckon the bright moon”.

She took a drink.

“Do you know what’s your best quality?”.

“What?”

“You never ask me irrelevant questions.”

“I wish I could say the same for you.”

He giggled.

“So, how old are you?”

“Oh, it’s time for bed.”

“Sure,” he agreed. “Definitely”. 

It was late afternoon, so she drew the curtains. He rolled himself up into a ball under a wrap on a sofa. She cleaned the room, picked up the empty bottles and dirty glasses.

“Now we are drunk,” she said leaving the room. “Each goes his way.”

“May we long share our odd, inanimate feast, and meet at last on the Cloudy River of the sky*,” he thought and passed out.

~*~

She was wearing a blue dress, and there was a little blue ribbon in her dark hair. She was talking to Peggy and smiling. Howard had a taste of martini. He though she was 32 at least, but the smile lighted up her face—young, soft and sweet. 

“How old are you?” he caught her when she got cocktails. “Twenty-six?”

“Why are you haunting me?” she said. His arm blocked her path, and she gave him a disapproving look. “You have nothing else to do, haven’t you?”

“Why are you not smiling?” he asked. He suddenly put two and two together. “You never smile at me”.

“Neither are you,” she answered and punched him in the solar plexus. While he was trying to remember how to breathe, she disappeared.

 

“If you beat me again, I will have to fire you,” he promised. It was evening and all guests just had left the house.

“If you keep bugging me, I will have to quit the job,” she answered by the same tone.

“I didn’t!” he complained. “You are not even my type.”

She gave him a raspberry. “You stalked me, blocked my way. What should I think?”.

“I didn’t stalk you!”

“You did stalk me,” she disagreed. “Your perfume is so strong, so I can smell your scent from 300 feet away”. She meaningful waved her hand before her face. She had worked for him seven years already and just now he noticed her wrists were such delicate and graceful. And she had three rings on her right hand, one on her thumb and others on her ring finger.

“When did you do it?”

She followed his gaze. “In the War,” she gave him a calm reply. “I became a bride and a widow in the War.”

 

“What do you mean ‘neither are you’?” he recollected one week later. “I’m smiling all the time!”

“Just muscles,” she said. “You put on a smile using the muscles around the mouth. It feels like someone has drawn a smile on your face.”

He didn’t know what to say. “Is it hard for you to smile?”

She gave him an odd gaze. “I need not pretend around you.”

~*~

He picked her purse by accident. No, he was not looking for a driver license. It wasn’t there, anyway. There was a bear—an old teddy bear. She caught him when he was reaching it out of the purse.

“How dare you!” she shocked and shied at him with a phone book. He recoiled, stumbled on wires covering the floor and felt down but held the teddy bear. “How dare you touch my stuff!”. She kicked him in the hip with her sharp nose shoe while he was trying to reach out his feet.

“I will fire you!”

“I will quit!”

~*~

The sea sighed and breathed heavily—a black ruthless abyss. A sharp cold wind burned a skin on a deck.

They were moving into the heart of the North.

Maria was reading a book in the cockpit near the heater.

“You don’t have to sail with me,” he said. Howard sat next to her, took out his hip flask.

“I like it,” she answered, then made a drop. “But if you mind—”

“No, I don’t mind.” 

 

It was impossible to look at snow. A boundless, ice desert. Howard put his hand to his forehead visor. Where are you, Steve? Under layers of snow and ice?

“If you think you will feel better when you find him… you are wrong.”

“You don’t—”

“I do,” she said. “I didn’t see him, I couldn’t bury him properly. He was blown up by a landmine. The arm and the ring were all I got.”

“I don’t—”

“You’re like a broken record,” she interrupted him again. “You have hope until you find him. He can be still alive. He can have an amnesia. Anything can happen. Anything can be... Drink your tea!”

She palmed him a thermos flask and returned to the ship.

 

The jet was flying over the ocean, sun glitters blinded him. Howard faced away from the cabin window. Maria was reading a book in the tail.

“If you dig into my soul again, I will have to fire you,” he shouted.

“I am one year younger than you,” she gave him a reply and looked at the book again. “Will you accept it as an apology?”

“I will.”

~*~

“Do you miss him?” Howard asked. She immediately understood. It was a late night or early morning, they were sitting on the roof because of the explosion—the house was full of smoke, and they couldn’t breathe.

“I miss him in the weeping of the rain,” she spouted poetry in reply. “I want him at the shrinking of the tide.”

“The old snows melt from every mountain-side,” he continued. “And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane.”

“But last year’s bitter loving must remain. Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.”

“There are a hundred places where I fear to go, —so with his memory they brim.”

“And entering with relief some quiet place where never fell his foot or shone his face.”

“I say, ‘There is no memory of him here!’ And so stand stricken, so remembering him**.”

He wiped away tears on the cheeks. The light of dawn brightened over the hill. The sun burned an edge of dark gray clouds, illuminated the sky.

Black was a color of their meeting. White was a color of his searching. Gray was a color of her sorrow. Blue was a color of her joy. Gold —

Howard didn’t know what gold meant, but he remembered—the five-colored clouds was a good sign.

~*~

“You are fired,” he said cheerfully and presented a tiny box to her.

“What is it?” she asked.

“You were married once, you should know.”

She kept silence—his throat tightened. He was imaging how she shied at him with a ring when she finally said, “It wasn’t in the box”.

“I can pull it out,” he offered.

“I will do it.”

 

She recalled his words, “I am not your type.”

“Definitely,” he agreed. “I never liked you.” She froze under his arm. “You make me feel alive again.”

**Author's Note:**

> * ‘Drinking Alone by Moonlight’ by Li Bai  
> ** ‘Time does not bring relief...’ by Edna St. Vincent Millay


End file.
